New Gmail Feature: Open PDF Attachments In Chrome Viewer

Good news for Google Chrome users. Gmail made an interesting update for those mail readers using the Google Chrome web browser to access Google’s email service. Till date, users were only allowed to view PDF attachments online via the Google‘s HTML viewer, which worked as a preview only. From now on, Chrome users can view PDF documents using the built-in PDF viewer by just clicking on the “view” link in Gmail.

Chrome users would be able to view PDF attachments in the browser whereas earlier this could be done by downloading files only. This no way means that Chrome users from now on can’t download the file, the feature remains there, whereas this step was only taken to bring convenience to the users and add security.

PDF-viewing plugins, installed on computers, generally eat up a lot of memory whereas security vulnerabilities in those plugins are often exploited, leaving users at risk. To avoid all this and keep user data safe, the best solution was to introduce a built-in functionality.

Testing several versions of the PDF viewer over several months, Google finally introduced the feature by default in Google Chrome 8. Marking its success, Google started to make use of it on other products.

Google announced:

The following features are intended for release to these domains on February 22 – Visible Bcc: Gmail will now provide email recipients an indicator when they are added via Bcc on an email. We will add a visible Bcc header only to messages sent from another Gmail user, not from external sources. PDF attachments showing the ‘View’ link open with Chrome’s native PDF viewer if available.

Khizer Hayat Farooq

Khizer Hayat Farooq, BlogDNA's Contributing Editor, is committed on bringing in the very best from the world of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Android, digital start ups, growing trends, social networks and new initiatives from digital firms. He aims to write one of the best software reviews and HOW-TO tricks one day.Contact him on khizer@blogsdna.com View author profile